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Today, there’s a bit of a priority in America for electing our next president, and vice president. This evening a few of us got together to watch the debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. I know what you’re thinking… where’s the keyword analysis? Well, as the debate was wrapping up, I heard a plethora of “mavericks”. I then though, it would be nice to do a bit of a keyword analysis on our candidates. I was most interested in aggregate word counts and overall vocabularies.
I started by looking at the most popular words between both candidates. I know “bailout” sure wasn’t in there. But hey, why get into current and future issues when you can talk about the past. Anyway, back to the most popular words.
Most popular words in Biden-Palin VP debate
Biden really likes “the”, but generally Palin prefers the small words. She’s number one for a, and, that, to, in, of. But Biden comes right back in number one for the loaded word “I”. Did you know Italians hardly ever even say “I”? On the other side of the coin, Palin liked to use we, you, and our more, showing that she indeed may be thinking a bit more about us, the average americans. Or she might just be talking more. As a matter of fact, she spoke 10% more words than Biden in the debate. Roughly 7,700 for Palin compared to 7,000 for Biden.
Next I wanted to look at the length of the candidate’s words.
VP Debate Word Length Distribution for Palin and Biden
Generally, I think results get diluted in a debate format because candidates tend to use and refute each other’s words. Other than 6 letter words (Barack Obama), Biden tended to use less words across the board. Two, and three letter words were most popular, and in these hard times, it wasn’t surprising to see four letter words as the most common words throughout the debate.
I have yet to really come to any great generalizations or conclusions distinguishing the candidates. So I decide to select some of the more significant words and see how each candidate stacked up.
Selected Word Counts During 2008 VP Debate
I think things get a little interesting here. Palin likes taxes, while Biden likes tax. Bucking the alleged bias of the national media, both candidates seem much more interested in McCain than Obama. Palin likes energy, while Biden likes policy and change. No big surprises there.
The real surprise for me was the counts for Afghanistan and America. Palin actually said Afghanistan more than America (16-15), and Biden wasn’t much better (12-13). I suppose I’d like to know that the candidates are thinking about facing our domestic challenges before venturing around the globe, but it seems like they are just playing a mutual game of beat around the bush.
Michael Hoskins
October 3rd, 2008
Keyword analysis of spoken words is far less significant given the amount of pandering and rhetoric that presidential candidates are known to do. In this case, context becomes more important than simple keyword saturation.
For example, Biden used repetition of “John McCain…” which is a common debating tactic, and doesn’t imply that he “likes” McCain more than Palin.
Nor do I feel that the number of mentions for Afghanistan or America are significant, given the format of the debate. The candidates (ideally) discuss the topics given to them by the moderator. I would tend to think these statistics convey more information about the moderator than either of the candidates.
Conclusion? They’re interesting graphs, but ultimately have little-to-no statistical significance. That being said, if we were analyzing the impact of this transcript on their respective websites, it might prove far more relevant.
Tommy Unger
October 3rd, 2008
Thanks for the comment Michael. At the heart of your argument is the use of the word “like”, and I agree with you. The candidates use of the words does not imply they like what/whom they are talking about. In many cases it meant the exact opposite, one case being Biden’s criticism of “McCain”. There’s definitely more in-depth analysis that can be done when taking into account the questions as well as the full context of the answer. From the very beginning though, I simply set out to look at aggregate numbers and see if there were any interesting patterns. “Maverick” from both Palin and Biden got me motivated.
bill
October 3rd, 2008
The real interesting data will be to do correlation between the words that McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden.